Three Denver institutions have returned more than 2,000 objects to tribes under a 1990 federal law. The effort is deemed a success - with a few exceptions.
"
Two painted animal bones - plucked from an American Indian burial site in Florida a century ago, and on a Denver museum shelf for the past 24 years - will be returned next month.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is "repatriating" the painted bones to the Miccosukee Tribe, in accordance with a 1990 federal law, officials said earlier this week.
The two bones are part of more than 2,000 objects and the remains of almost 600 individuals returned to tribes from three Denver institutions under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Sixteen years after the act was passed, museum and tribal representatives say it has been a great success - marred by a few frustrating exceptions.
Some American Indian groups have found the process of returning ancestors home to be bureaucratic, frustrating, expensive and time-consuming.
"We've been on this since the year 2000, trying to get these things returned so our people can be at rest," said Fred Dayhoff, who represents the Miccosukee tribe.
Many museum officials feared the repatriation act would strip their shelves bare of Native American objects - which had come to them through donations, purchases and bequeathals and from expeditions and digs a century ago.
"Rather than NAGPRA leaving us bankrupt, it's enriched the knowledge we have about our objects," said Bridget Ambler, curator of material culture at the Colorado Historical Society.
The Historical Society has returned remains of 568 Native American individuals, and 1,825 items, Ambler said. Last year, some remains were reburied at Mesa Verde National Park.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has returned the remains of six people and 176 objects, museum anthropologist Steven Nash said.
The Denver Art Museum has returned 10 items under the act, spokeswoman Andrea Fulton said.
Dayhoff said the Miccosukee people requested hundreds of items from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science six years ago.
"We're going to get two," Dayhoff said.
Other items - shell ornaments, coins and breastplates used in burials, Dayhoff said - remain in limbo because anthropologists identify them as Calusa.
The Miccosukee believe they are descended in part from the Calusa - who disappeared from southwest Florida around 1800, Dayhoff said.
Without the return of the objects, he said, Miccosukee ancestors can't find the next world.
"They will wander Earth forever looking for these lost items," Dayhoff said.
The issue of cultural identification has been the repatriation act's trickiest element, said national program manager Sherry Hutt.
The law has resulted in the return of nearly 32,000 human remains to tribes, she said.
More than 118,000 others sit in limbo on museum shelves because tribes and museums can't figure out to whom they belong, Hutt said.
In most cases, the bones were too poorly cataloged to know where they came from, said Walter Echo-Hawk, a senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder who helped write the repatriation act. "
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